Your shopping cart is empty
In defence of the income tax
Published on 01 Mar 20 by "AUSTRALIAN TAX FORUM" JOURNAL ARTICLE
It is a privilege to present the 2019 Justice Graham Hill Memorial Lecture. Graham combined the best of the academic and the professional in taxation.1 Justice Hill was interested in public policy as demonstrated by his involvement in the work of the Taxation Review Committee in the 1970s which led to the landmark Asprey Report, with his contribution particularly in the context of the gift and estate duty.2 He was not afraid to stand up for an unpopular cause. One of the members of the Taxation Review Committee was Professor Ross Parsons of University of Sydney Law School. Over 30 years ago on the eve of retirement at the end of 1986 he delivered a paper entitled Income Taxation: An Institution in Decay3 which described the income tax as a supernova – a star in its death throes when it grows enormously in size and intensity and then withers away. While he did not foresee the end of the income tax he thought it would be significantly replaced by a consumption tax, the underlying theme being that the income tax was incoherent and by implication that a VAT/GST was coherent.